In perhaps a bit of a surprise announcement, two of the most trusted names on the Steem blockchain will be joining forces for EOS. Partnering under the name Greymass, @jesta and @anyx will be bringing together their individual skills to create a uniquely qualified EOS block production team.
The first question on everyone's mind right now is probably: "Will our EOS goals affect our individual witness activities on Steem?"
The answer is a resounding “No!” In the same way that many Bitshares witnesses also became Steem witnesses, adding value due to their vast experience with the DPOS systems and Graphene blockchains, we believe that Steem and EOS will work in a similar way. These two blockchains are siblings, with many common features and a large overlap in community members. Thanks to their related codebases and overall synergy, our experiences with Steem will accelerate our productivity on EOS, and conversely, our new experiences with EOS will drive development for Steem. We intend for this to be a mutually beneficial relationship.
In addition, part of the reason for our partnership on EOS is to avoid distraction from our own individual Steem witness responsibilities. Rather than each of us working on producing EOS blocks by ourselves, we have combined our efforts to become a single EOS block producer. This arrangement gives us more time to do what we do best -- add value to both blockchain platforms (and perhaps others too!), with our unique sets of skills and experiences.
Finally, we are not the first Steem witnesses to announce their intent to run as a candidate for EOS -- and we think that’s a good thing! We believe it is beneficial for these communities -- and for the cryptocurrency world in general -- to unite towards our common goals.
Our Mission
Greymass (Our company name, and official block producer candidate) will be headquartered in Michigan, USA. Our mission is to enrich the EOS platform by building, and helping others to build, cool and useful stuff!
Our top priority is the strong development of the EOS infrastructure and community. We passionately believe that blockchain systems can only reach their full potential when both their infrastructure and community are developed with clear intent. While we aren’t sharing too many details about our plans just yet, stay tuned -- we will be announcing a lot of cool projects soon, including our plans for eosDB, the steemDB equivalent!
Our Partnership
Although you know them as @jesta and @anyx, they are real people! Here’s a bit more info about them, and what they’ve been up to.
Aaron Cox : @jesta
Full Stack & Blockchain Developer
Aaron is a veteran web developer with over twenty years of experience, specializing in publishing platforms, social/community engines, and data mining. Aaron has released all his efforts open-source, merged his past experiences with new Blockchain protocols, and previously worked on developing a crowd-sourced review platform. In addition, Aaron has worked as the lead web developer for a number of tech companies, such as NCSOFT.
Aaron is incredibly fascinated by the impact Blockchain technologies will have on the Internet itself. Since devoting himself full-time to exploring this tech, he has built a number of apps including wallets such as Vessel, a number of block explorers, and prototypes for end users platforms such as chainBB and Reprint. Aaron is currently a top elected delegate as @jesta on the Steem, Decent, Muse, and Karma blockchains.
Scott Sallinen : @anyx
Research Scientist
Scott is a Computer Engineering Ph.D. Candidate at the University of British Columbia, with research areas of High Performance Computing and Distributed Systems, Graph Processing, Machine Learning, and Blockchain technologies. Scott has published multiple peer-reviewed papers within these domains at top-tier research conferences such as Supercomputing, and has previously worked in the research divisions of top technology companies such as Intel and Facebook.
Scott has a passion for the application of Blockchain technologies in the real world. He has built and led the @steemcleaners and @cheetah projects on the Steem blockchain for several years, in an effort to address and reduce fraud and phishing on the social media platform. Scott is also a top elected delegate as @anyx on the Steem blockchain.
Position on Dividends
A question that is on many people’s minds right now is the debate about dividends, or “kickbacks in exchange for votes” from EOS Block Producers.
Our stance is clear: we will never participate in a kickback system. Instead, we intend to use our funds to directly innovate and enrich the EOS platform.
Statement Update in 2020 - The above statement was far too much of an optimistic stance when it was originally made. Greymass at the time of this update now works within a few select "kickback systems" and contributes a small percentage of its block producer revenue to proxies who elect value-adding producers. Unfortunately. the EOS ecosystem today requires this of us in order to be within a paid position, and Greymass feels this path is the lesser of two evils. We understand the damage this behavior causes within these systems and will continue to push for the change to help solve the issues vote buying causes.
Delegated proof of stake is a trusted system, where block producers are elected based upon what is effectively a delegated form trust. It can be inductively proven that in a system where voters choose their votes solely based upon receipt of dividends, the system degrades into an un-trustable system, with no proven security model.
While voters will likely factor in many things when choosing whom to vote for, we will err on the side of caution for the sake of the security of EOS, and never offer any kickback to our voters.
This is true of all DPOS models, including Steem, and we will be publishing a blog post on Steem explains the inductive proof of this soon. We encourage all other block producers to read it before offering dividends.
Contact Us
Greymass will be run as a partnership between @jesta and @anyx, and we’ll be bringing on board new team members in the coming weeks as we hire to round out our positions and expertise. Interested in joining our team? Let us know!
We will be announcing a lot more soon, so stay tuned.
Find Us At: